Transcript

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With the HighsCome the Lows: Top Google Project Fails

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Google has long been known for its searchengine service. In fact, it‟s the very servicethat the company built its entire empireupon. Its success with the service is suchthat the word “google” has since been addedto the formal English lexicon.

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Despite this synonymity with “internetinformation searching,” Google has beenbranching out to other business opportunitiesfor a number of years now. Among its mostsuccessful ones are its two virtual mapsprograms, Google Earth and Google Maps; itsGoogle Android mobile operating system; andits Google handsets (outsourced to phonemanufacturers) optimized to get the fullest outof Android.

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Recently, the internet giant has been makingheads turn with their current R&D project(read: prototype), the Google Glass. If thingsproceed as planned, we could all be lookingat what will be the very first commerciallyavailable (assuming the technology hasalready been used by the military, as mostof these newfangled techs are) head-mounted augmented reality display. Thefuture is looking bright indeed, not just forGoogle but for technological development asa whole.

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Of course, despite these successes, Googlehas taken its share of failure with itsattempts at diversification. Here are themost notable.

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1. Google KnolKnol was Google‟s bid to dethrone Web 2.0 encyclopedia champWikipedia. Made available to the public for interfacing in July 2008, theproject eventually folded due to a bevy of programming and publicitydilemmas.Most surprisingly, one of the causes of its demise was the far superiorSEO efforts of Wikipedia. Since SEO trends are largely dictated byGoogle, having another company beat you at your own game should bemore than enough to convince anyone to throw in the towel.

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2. Google WaveBack in the latter part of the 2000s, a massmigration of users occurred, switching theirsocial networking site preference fromMyspace to Facebook. Incidentally, Wavewas released just as Facebook‟s popularityshot through the roof.

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When Wave was starting to gain someground (which happened concurrently withFacebook facing problems of its own),industry pundits speculated that anothermass migration was very likely to occur.Fast-forward to today, and not only has thisnot happened, but Google shut down Waveas well.

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A big factor in Wave‟s departure was itsambition to expand the concept of socialnetworking. Aside from the usual featureswe‟re all familiar with, Google implementedinstant messaging, email, wikis, and whatnotto the mix. This made Wave rather complexfor most users to handle, which wasn‟thelped any by the fact that Wave‟s interfacewas just as muddy as its concept.

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Google seems to have learned its lessonthough: Google+, Wave‟s apparent“successor,” seems to be taking things onestep at a time. Only time will tell how thisstrategy will pan out.

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3. Google VideoWhen you think of search engines, Googleundoubtedly springs to mind. In the samevein, when you mention internet videos, andyou can bet that most people will think ofYouTube.

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As with the case of every other dominatingpresence, YouTube‟s success put a bullseyeon its back. Not content with being at the topof the search engine arena (though thatreally isn‟t necessarily a bad thing), Googletried its hand at video-sharing too.

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Unfortunately for the company, GoogleVideo wasn‟t able to garner any attention.Google‟s penchant for simply taking videosfrom other video-sharing sites like Metacafe,Vimeo, and of course YouTube, did it in.Also, Google Video‟s nonexistent contentfiltering played a huge part in its termination.

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4. Google Buzz Finally, we have Google Buzz. Many are calling this Google‟s biggest fail, simply because it didn‟t really bring anything new to the microblogging table. Accordingly, Buzz being out there was just one Twitter too many. A simple end to a simple program. „Nuff said.